Scriptor Press - The ElectroLounge

36
My radio show on ABFR ended that spring,
and it would remain on hiatus for over a year (and
would revive in a way I could not have foreseen then).
The truth is that nothing good was going on by the
end of my time in Boston, and what good remained,
such as this show, bogged down in the murk of my
sadness. I look back on those Sunday afternoons and
think how much fun they were—the long rush to get
to the station, the stop for new music at HMV in
Boston on the way, talking online with the people
tuned in, mixing all sorts of crazy music and sounds
with my crazy voice—and I wish I could have enjoyed them more at the time. But I was not
enjoying anything anymore. My heart’s shipwreck had virtually crippled me as a functioning
being, and there was nothing to do but to follow my obsessions to where they beckoned.
I didn’t work on The Cenacle or other projects because I had become a jobless
recluse, the Jellicle Guild’s inspiration gone from my life, & my only cares seemed to be
writing the poems of 6 x 36 Nocturnes for my muse & finding my way to join her on the
West Coast.
Then I scored some temporary work doing editing at a corporation. After my long
daily commute, I did the simple work, called Lisa at lunch & in the evening. For a few weeks
in the late winter I was a couple of steps up from bottom. I was OK.
Then her break to leave home, long-desired, came, & within 48 hours she ended our
relationship in favor of someone local. Nine months of fantasy verging on reality was over. I
fucked up my job, & spun down. Survived, & spun down both.
It was two more years before I put a stop to the ugly blood-drizzle our friendship
became, & longer than that before I was strong enough to push her away from me for good.
When it first happened, I was too blinded with despair to see options, to cut the diseased
limb & save the body.
Weeks went by & nothing good happened. At the beginning of June I left Boston
after ten years living there, & I’ve not been back in the several years since. A brief stop in
Connecticut to leave most of my possessions in a friend’s basement, to drink a symbolic toast
with a friend (my first drop of alcohol in ten months; last ever), & on to a cross-country
Greyhound I hopped, bound for Seattle, Washington by way of Portland, Oregon where
Eurydice dwelled captive in an unhappy new romance. So cried my delusional heart.
Scriptor Press hardly existed during these spring months of 2002. I was writing 6 x
36 Nocturnes to save my life. Nothing else, no other work, was important then.
Three days on a series of buses cross-country & I was both high & withered with
excitement. Follow your heart—at your own risk. I’d traveled cross-country before but never
intending to stay. I wrote, sometimes talked to people, feeling deeper within than maybe ever
before.
I arrived in Portland in early June 2002 & at last met my heart’s desire, & for a few
quickly disintegrating moments thought I would keep her. No: the Orpheus myth I selected
for its great potency told my tale well too. I didn’t have enough to offer her by way of
stability—staying with a friend in Seattle & jobless still—& though she lingered at moments
till year’s end & beyond, the rift between us never healed. The wound of loss hasn’t fully
either.
Summer came & with it my other great passion: the Burning Man Arts Festival. I
finally got Scriptor Press back in gear & set to making new books for the fourth annual
appearance of No Borders Free Bookstore at Black Rock City, Nevada.
The Cenacle / 54 / April 2005